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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22445215">Barnyard Epithet</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger'>HarveyWallbanger</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 13:15:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,915</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22445215</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>WAGNER: The villain is bare and out of service, and so hungry that I know he would give his soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, though it were blood raw.<br/>ROBIN: How!  My soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, though t’were blood raw?  Not so!  I need have it well-roasted, and a good sauce to it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Charles Frederick Des Voeux/Cornelius Hickey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Barnyard Epithet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This story takes place during the events of "Horrible From Supper", before Hickey and Tozer's conversation with Hodgson.<br/>The quote in the summary comes from the play, Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe.<br/>I am not involved in the production of The Terror.  No one pays me to do this.  This story and the work it's based upon are fiction.  Do not try any of this at home.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Lovely evening for it,” Hickey says.<br/>
Charles will not dignify that with an answer.  Frowning, he sniffs, as though having detected a displeasing odor, narrows his eyes, hoping that Hickey will take this as the put-off it is.<br/>
But Hickey only asks: “What are you thinking?”<br/>
Charles closes his eyes.  He sighs, opens them again, regards Hickey coldly.  “I was thinking that this place has the semblance of a knacker’s yard, but none of its charm.  What do you want, Mr. Hickey?”<br/>
“Speaking of the place in which we currently find ourselves, don’t you think it curious that we’ve yet to encounter any other persons?  Not Lieutenant Fairholme’s party, returning with aid and supplies.  Or, perhaps, these Good Samaritan natives of Crozier’s.”<br/>
“Not especially,” he says, though, inwardly, he feels a chill.  The place is barren, and in such a way that exaggerates natural and reasonable concerns.  Abandonment.  Ambush.  Simply being there feels like a kind of perdition.  Perhaps it’s already happened, but they as yet lack the capacity to understand how doomed they truly are.  To throw off this thought, he gives Hickey a contemptuous look.  “Or perhaps you simply find yourself wanting for stimulating company.”<br/>
Hickey smiles.  “Oh, I don’t want for company.”  His smile evaporates, too quickly for it to be anything but dissembling, though the frown that replaces it is disconcertingly sincere.  “Have we been brought here to die?”<br/>
Another chill.  It is becoming an annoyance.  Whatever Hickey thinks he’s doing, he doesn’t know, cannot know what Charles knows.  Not that Charles is in possession of very much knowledge, at all; only an incomplete phrase uttered by Goodsir, all but swallowed by the din of the carnival: “… it’s in the tins.”  After the carnival, Charles had forgotten about it, but, now, in this place, with nothing to look at and little to do but wait and then haul and then wait again, it comes to him with increasing frequency.  He lies in bed in the dark, the words spinning in his brain.  He wakes, the words stamped on his thoughts before he’s even fully aware of himself.<br/>
Charles could have been mistaken.<br/>
Yet, as Goodsir said it, he held up one of the tins.<br/>
Charles had not been mistaken.<br/>
If Charles were ill, he’d know it.<br/>
“Go away, Mr. Hickey.”<br/>
Hickey’s expression of concern lingers.  “Not being included in the private discussions of my superiors, I can only speculate as to whether or not I have reason to worry.  You, however, are in a position to know far more than myself.  If there were reason to worry, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”  His eyes are open wide; large and pale, they catch the dying light of day.  “Sir?” he adds, a particularly irritating display, but one that still makes Charles frown, drop his eyes.<br/>
He doesn’t feel ill, not exactly.<br/>
“Don’t look for reasons to fret,” Charles says, with a gentleness that surprises him.  “There are already enough reasons, all around us.”<br/>
He feels restless and weary, but this is not illness.  This is simply the condition of being alive.<br/>
“So, there’s nothing I should know?”<br/>
When he lies down at night, he hurts all over.  He sometimes bleeds from the mouth, the blood curiously thin and pale.  His head hurts.  His gut hurts.  His bowels are intractable.  The inside of his mouth is beginning to turn a sort of blue-gray.<br/>
He looks at Hickey, into those pale, bright eyes.  “No, Mr. Hickey.”<br/>
“Thank you, sir,” Hickey says, sounding so sincere that Charles feels himself pull back, frowning and blinking in disbelief.  “I knew I could depend on you to set my mind at ease.”<br/>
Charles says nothing, but looks straight ahead.  At the darkness that has swallowed the last gasp of daylight.  At nothing.  At all of the nothing all around them.  He hears Hickey walking away, his steps on the shales slow, hesitant.  He’s waiting.  Charles knows that he’s waiting.<br/>
There’s no reason to keep him waiting.<br/>
Charles doesn’t shift his gaze from the darkness.  He sighs.  He calls: “Wait!”</p><p>There’s a strange pleasure in regarding Hickey, in having to incline one’s head to do so, in being able to actually stare down one’s nose at him.  He’s not far beneath Charles’ stature, but the difference is sufficiently great to make Charles feel superior.  It’s a cheap, somewhat sordid pleasure.<br/>
But cheap, sordid pleasures are the condition of being alive.<br/>
“For what I’m about to tell you, I want something in return.”<br/>
His eyes gilded when they catch the lantern light in Charles’ tent, Hickey smiles, too knowing for this to still be a matter of simple reassurance, an insinuating smirk that marks him as also deriving some pleasure from this exchange.  Cheap, sordid pleasure, no doubt.  So they are united in this; the condition of being alive.  “And what would that be, Mr. Des Voeux?”<br/>
Charles allows himself to smile right back.  “What do you think?”<br/>
“All right.  So, go on, tell me what you know.”<br/>
“Giving payment before services are rendered is a good way to be defrauded.  You must know that,” Charles adds, because it feels good to do it.<br/>
“Then, half now, and half afterwards.  That way, neither of us will feel cheated.”<br/>
“All right,” Charles sighs, then takes a moment, considers how to best approach the question.  He settles on: “Something is making us fall ill.”<br/>
“Well, it’s not scurvy, or you wouldn’t have bothered.  So, what?”<br/>
“Something we’ve all been exposed to.”<br/>
“And what might that be?”<br/>
Charles shakes his head.  “Now, you.”<br/>
Hickey laughs derisively.  “That’s not half of what you know.  That isn’t half of anything.”<br/>
Charles rolls his eyes.  “Some things can’t be divided equally.  Either allow that your curiosity is piqued, and hold up your end of the bargain, or fuck off.”<br/>
Now, his hand coming up to his chest, Hickey laughs in earnest, a surprisingly merry sound; pleasant, even.  It is pleasant, Charles thinks absently, letting it make him feel something soft, and letting that softness irritate him.  He places his hands on Hickey’s shoulders, gives Hickey a moment to realize what’s happening, and then kisses Hickey.<br/>
Whatever else one might say about him, Hickey understands the importance of providing good value.  There’s no hesitation, no play-acted shock or reluctance.  He kisses like someone used to being handled with urgency, his mouth on Charles’ betraying his habits: the way he opens his mouth, the way he sucks Charles’ tongue, the suggestion of teeth that is neither warning nor clumsiness but provocation.  There’s not yet a compelling reason to leave off, so Charles continues to kiss him, letting himself become breathless, welcoming the agitation that builds, enjoying, even the slowness with which it builds.<br/>
Hickey pulls away, dragging Charles’ breath with him.  “What else?” Hickey asks.<br/>
Roughly, Charles breathes in, and then out, again.  A ragged sound.  It could be one of illness.  He makes himself think only of what is immediate, what is before him.  “That’s not half of what you know, either.”<br/>
Hickey smiles, a dimple in his cheek splitting the spot of pink there.  He sets the palm of his hand against the front of Charles’ trousers; not in the correct place, but sufficiently close to make Charles’ breath hitch, his eyes slipping shut.  He opens his eyes.<br/>
“It’s something we’ve consumed,” Charles says.<br/>
“Closer,” Hickey says, and cups his hand between Charles’ legs.<br/>
“Not yet.”<br/>
“No,” Hickey says.  His hand grasps.  “Not yet.”<br/>
“Whatever it is that’s making us ill is in our food.”<br/>
“That much was obvious,” Hickey says, and undoes Charles’ trousers.<br/>
Fuck it.  “It’s in the tinned food.”<br/>
“Very good,” Hickey says, sounding pleasantly surprised.  He slips his hand inside.  For the moment, he is still, and Charles is grateful.  It’s not enough, but it’s too much.  He closes his eyes, breathes deeply.  “What else?” Hickey asks.<br/>
Charles laughs.  “You’re not getting away so easily.”<br/>
“I’d be disappointed if you thought to let me.”  Hickey unbuttons Charles’ drawers.  The cold air hits him, and it should discourage him, but it only makes him feel a strange sort of giddiness.  He pulls Hickey close against him, kisses him, arches down toward him as Hickey’s hand enters his drawers and touches flesh; the brush of a knuckle or a fingertip against his thigh, making him tremble.  Then, Hickey’s hand, reaching down deep into his clothing, to grip his balls and tug, slowly, but with enough conviction to make Charles moan, transfixed by a sensation that is neither entirely pleasurable nor entirely painful but inescapable.<br/>
He pulls his mouth away from Hickey’s, presses his face against Hickey’s shoulder, and bites the wool of Hickey’s coat.  Laughing softly, Hickey tugs again, gently, making Charles’ hips stutter forward.  He could be a mechanical toy, something Hickey delights in seeing the workings of.  Perhaps the aim is to take Charles apart.  Charles raises his head, kisses Hickey again, bites his lip this time.  Either chastened or having decided that Charles has suffered enough, Hickey moves his hand to Charles’ cock, pulls at him with a slight twist at the end, like an artistic flourish.<br/>
“What else?” Hickey says.  His voice soft, his other hand on Charles’ face, he could be murmuring endearments.<br/>
Charles closes his eyes, makes himself breathe slowly and evenly.  “It was at the carnival,” he says.  “I saw Goodsir talking to the doctors.  He said, ‘It’s in the tins.’”<br/>
“Who else knows?”<br/>
Charles shakes his head.  “I don’t know.  The doctors are all dead, and I don’t know who else Goodsir would have told.  Captain Crozier, probably.”<br/>
“Yet, he hasn’t told us.  Why?”<br/>
Charles laughs.  “Do you think I know?”<br/>
“No,” Hickey says gently, caresses Charles’ face.  “I think you’ve told me everything you know.”<br/>
“Yes,” Charles says unnecessarily.  Hickey’s hand is still around his cock, not moving, but there for Charles to move within his grasp.<br/>
“If you learn anything else, I’d appreciate being told.”<br/>
“Yes,” Charles says, pushing into Hickey’s hand.<br/>
Hickey removes his hand.  Before Charles can protest, Hickey goes to his knees.  There’s no art to it, now.  Hickey takes him deep, and Charles is too exhausted, too pulled taut to do anything but let Hickey finish him.  He’s taken himself this far from reason, so he lets himself cry out.  It sounds more an utterance of horror than of pleasure.  Indeed, there’s something horrible about it, how much he wanted it, how willing he was to forget himself.  How good it felt, how good it continues to feel, Hickey taking him past the point of termination, his mouth now gentle, kissing more than sucking, making Charles tremble anew with the echoes of pleasure.<br/>
Charles sighs.<br/>
Hickey stands, brushes his thumb against his mouth, looking more satisfied with himself than anything.  Still struggling to catch his breath, all Charles can do is look at Hickey.  Hickey’s expression softens, into something like pity, Charles supposes, and he tucks Charles back into his drawers, buttons them and Charles’ trousers.  He doesn’t move away, so Charles throws his arm around Hickey’s shoulders.  He kisses Hickey, tastes himself in Hickey’s mouth.  It is, by far, not the foulest thing that Charles has had in his mouth.<br/>
They’ve all tasted foulness, Charles thinks, without anger or bitterness.  Without anything, in particular.  It is simply the condition of being alive.  Kissing him, he touches Hickey’s face, is touched by Hickey in return.  All of them are full of foul things.  All the world, full of foul things.</p>
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